The purpose of the Nursing Partnership Center for the Advancement of Health Disparities Research is to participate in and provide leadership to research-based innovations that will reduce health disparities among and within population groups. The Center will focus particular but not exclusive attention on health disparities affecting the Asian and Pacific Islander population. The mission of the Center is threefold. The Center will develop a collaborative relationship between the University of Washington and The University of Hawaii Schools of Nursing that will foster sustainable mechanisms for scholarship development in health disparities. The Center will mentor nurse researchers through learning institutes, guided research studies, and dissemination of new knowledge. These mentored nurse researchers will begin the development of a knowledge base for innovation in health disparities research. The mission of the Center will be guided by a conceptual framework that makes explicit the variables of interest that influence health disparities and the mechanism the Center will use to impact the ultimate outcome of reducing health disparities. The Center will act as a catalyst for research on the variables affecting health disparities. The mechanism includes the recruitment, selection and mentoring of faculty using the expert knowledge of the Advisory Committee and senior faculty of both institutions. The Center will knit together a set of pilot studies each year of the grant that advance the knowledge about health disparities and knowledge about best practices to eliminate health disparities. The Center will channel the knowledge discovered via its mentoring and dissemination core. The variables of interest for the Center are clustered into five dimensions: Determinants of Health; Effects on Population Health Resulting from Health Disparities; Health Care Needs Resulting from Health Disparities; Policy and System Supports for the Elimination of Health Disparities; and Health Status Data, Trends in Disparities, and Best Approaches.